I got hooked on Shameless, the American version, currently waiting for its 3rd season. The family is a bunch of crazy losers, fighting for every day, making pitiful amounts of money to buy the cheapest products that even the Chinese would ignore, fighting their additions and weaknesses while breeding like rabbits.
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The actors for the US version were amazing. The Dad, an actor of nearly-Oscar stature, drives the show with his drunken “loserness”.
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However, I then discovered the British version – as with many amazing TV show, it was the Brits that conceived and implemented the idea. Shameless UK is a 9 season story, meaning that the Americans have a lot of seasons ahead of them. The UK version (original!) of the father, although less known, is even better!
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It is a hard show to watch in “marathon” mode, watching episodes one after the other – I survived 3 seasons at one go, over a few days, but then I had to take a break, coming back to the next seasons after a month-long break. Why? I missed the crazy crazies.
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The UK version is deeper – although the US version shows similar lumpenproletariat lowliness of existence, the UK version is more dark, depressing, soggy, downtrodden. It reeks of Manchester, the unemployed for decades part, and such an atmosphere is difficult to replicate in the US. Even the accents are worse in UK, and anyone who has heard the real tongue will appreciate the depths of the UK show. Interestingly, I wonder how many non-native English speakers watched the UK version and grasped the words, terms, social and cultural and local inferences? I found the US version much easier, maybe because it is aimed at a simpler (??) audience that cannot understand (and thus appreciate) the accent-context?
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I have mixed feelings about the show, and maybe that is why it draws me in every time.
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They are amazing losers, people forgotten by God, fate and state, descending with each episode lower into the definition of whatever bottom-feeding-scum that can be found in the Devil’s dictionary. Drugs, alcohol, thievery, hard crime, violence, betrayal, failure are the standard issues in their daily lives. Cheating and stealing are not just limited to the outside world, as the family does the same to each other, close friends, etc. Crime lords, crazies, criminals, psychos surround them, adding mayhem to their lives.
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At the same time, there is something sweet and optimistic. These are humans at the bottom of the social scale for whom, it turns out, blood is the only determinant of (whatever remaining) loyalty. They are the gang of crazies out against everyone else. There is love (twisted, psychotic, supremely emotional, irrational and unpredictable) that powers them along, gives them strength in time of ultimate doom, while the closely-knit universe of a few people (dozen?) is faced with the challenge of taking on the entire world. They somehow survive.
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Knowing how the world really works, enforces the simple message of that show: blood is thicker than everything else. There is no escaping family.
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A lesson for us, in Central Europe, filled with lovers of the Vodka fluid, is interesting: just like the father in Shameless, every alcoholic loser can utter reality-altering philosophical sentences that explode your reality. If it is not him/her, then similar sentences can be provided by the scarred children. In their single-second of clarity, alcoholics are sane, super sane, Plato-like-sane. It is a pity they descend into chaos and destruction immediately after…
A lesson for all in the world, relates to a question: what will people do, to achieve any, Any, ANY happiness in their everyday-miserable lives?